NASA’s Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope launching in May
Jan 27th, 2008 by RedPepper
NASA’s new Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), scheduled for launch in May, can help scientists learn more about the strange gamma rays generated in staggeringly distant galaxies.
Gamma ray bursts, bursts of photons with billions of times more energy than ordinary light, were first observed in the 1960s by U.S. satellites looking for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests.
Scientists quickly realized that the bursts were not from Earth, and not even from the Milky Way, but instead originated in staggeringly distant galaxies. In the 1990s, NASA launched the Compton Gamma-ray Observatory, which recorded 2704 bursts, and found more than 400 new gamma ray sources.
But even with that new information, researchers aren’t sure what causes the bursts. To have so much energy, the sources must be something genuinely cataclysmic – perhaps two neutron stars colliding, or the explosion of an extraordinarily large star, they speculate.
With two separate instruments recording gamma-ray bursts of different energies, GLAST is expected to help puzzle out those origins.